Category: Mac

If you looked around an Apple Store today with all the machines turned off — and all the iOS devices out of sight — everything would look almost the same as it did this time in 2012. And yet, a lot has changed. The Mac Pro may be the only Mac with a huge redesign this year, but under the hood, every other Mac has gotten rather significant spec bumps. Battery life has been the huge winner this year, with the new Air giving an astonishing 12+ hours of battery life. And the new Mac Pro proved that Apple *does* care about pro users still.

On the software front, you could again think nothing had changed in a cursory glance in our imaginary Apple store, since on the surface Mavericks looks little different. And yet, it’s faster and more power efficient under the hood, and has new apps that are each rather nice. Plus, there’s the new iWork, redesigned for better or worse and now free with all new Macs.

So that’s 2013. But what’s next? A redesigned MacBook Air, perhaps, or an iOS 7ified OS X? Or a totally new computing product that’ll surprise us all?

Give us your wildest and most hoped-for predictions for Apple in 2014. We’d love to hear them!

Email’s the essential private messaging tool that’s been with us since the earliest days of the internet, but sometimes it can be so frustrating. Most email apps are inflexible, with dated interfaces you can’t tweak. That’s what’s so nice about Airmail, our sponsor this week.

Airmail’s the new email app that’s gotten everyone’s attention this year, and for good reason. It combines the simplicity of a modern Mac email app with the customization you’ll love, so your email app can work just like you want. You can pick from 8 different message styles, so your email inbox is as full-featured or minimal as you’d like. There’s options for a modern or classic window style, and three composer window views. Then, you can tweak font sizes, badges, and language, so everything in Airmail looks and works the way you’d expect.

Airmail also includes a ton of extra features so it’ll work with the services you want. It’ll check your email no matter what service you use, and includes IMAP, POP3, and even Exchange support. It can automatically upload your email attachments through Dropbox, Google Drive, Droplr, CloudApp, or your own server, and can archive emails to Evernote so you can easily find them later.

Get Your Copy of Airmail Today!

There’s no reason to start the new year with your old email app, when you can get your own copy of Airmail from the App Store for just $1.99! So why wait? Go get your own copy of Airmail, and see what everyone’s been talking about. It’s a fresh new email app that’ll look and work the way you want, so your email experience won’t be so annoying in 2014.

Writer Pro is a bit bipolar. On the Mac, the app takes writing to a different level; elevating Markdown and a clean workflow into a smooth running system that is a pleasure to use. But on iOS, it’s a mess with very little reason to appear on your homescreen. And both apps cost $19.95.

And so, I’m conflicted. I like using Writer Pro, but I don’t enjoy using it on both platforms. In addition, new additional information about the developers has appeared, making me feel even worse. So should you spend $20 or $40 on the Writer Pro app system, or is it best to just walk away? Let’s find out.

The Backstory

A few years ago, the app world blew up with all sorts of plain-text editors. They all seemed to function with a few similarities, including a lack of adjustable preferences, and a “distraction free” writing workspace. One of those apps was iA Writer.

Being a writer myself, I purchased iA Writer for my iPad and Mac, but it just never worked for me. It functioned just fine, but I couldn’t get into the way it looked and flowed. I chose Byword for my plain-text needs, and that’s what I’ve used ever since on both my Mac and iOS.

Writer Pro is made by the same people who built iA Writer, and they’ve put a lot of thought into the product. But understand that it’s still not an in-depth word processor the way that Scrivener or Ulysses III are, it’s just a ramped up version of iA Writer. And even then, it still shares the same distraction-free environment and a lack of adjustable preferences, there are just more features to be had. Point is, this will not replace Pages or Microsoft Word if you need either of them in your workflow. However, if you are a writer who enjoys writing in Markdown — oh yeah, the entire system is based on the format — then this is yet another option to consider.

What Makes It Special

Writer Pro is about your workflow. Like I said, they’ve put a lot of time into researching how writers write:

Inspired by Hans Blumenberg’s mind bending Book “Sources, Streams, Icebergs” (Quellen, Ströme, Eisberge), we referred to the writing process through the metaphor of a river while designing Writer Pro. A river grows when multiple sources (Note) join into a stream (Write), which spreads into a delta (Edit), before flowing into the ocean (Read).

That’s how things flow in Writer Pro. There are visual clues that separate each section — different fonts, colors and options — which keep your focus on the task at hand.

But the big kicker here, the selling point as iA is pitching it, is Syntax Control, their “Patent Pending” system that’s supposed to change the game. When you write, there are times that you find yourself using weak adverbs, adjectives or sentence structure (most of the times unintentionally), and Syntax Control pulls out all of that information and highlights it on the screen. If you’re not used to editing your documents thoroughly enough to recognize the issues yourself, then this will definitely help your end product.

Then there’s the not-so-good part.

What Isn’t Cool

Syntax Control is pretty neat, and it seems like the type of thing that’s so obvious that someone had to think of it before. As it turns out, someone did.

Apple.

The Verge recently wrote an article about the topic, and to give you the tl;dr version, Syntax Control appears to be pretty easy to implement if you know anything about the NSLinguisticTagger Class Reference. What makes this worse is that the developers are threatening to sue anyone who takes a similar path on iOS or OSX (or were, anyways), and that’s not very sporting.

Their militant stance on that issue is also opening them up to criticism from reviewers in the App Store as well — 18 five-star and 17 one-star ratings puts them right at three stars. People are feeling ripped off, and when you hear their complaints, it’s hard not to consider their merits. For example:

• The “read” view is not a markdown preview? Seriously, this one is so obvious. I can’t even imagine what the thinking behind it was.

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But the way modes are implemented does not jive with the way that they are presented on the product website. The ONLY thing that happens when you switch modes is a font and cursor color change. Things you write in the notes mode to prepare for your drafts carry over to each successive mode. Read mode doesn’t even strip out the markdown characters and present the text to you as a proper preview. Dropbox support (a crucial part of the original app) has been removed entirely.

One other glaring omission is the lack of link support. For the uninitiated, if you want to create an inline link in Markdown, you wrap the words you want to link in [ ] and then follow them with the link in (). Example: I want to [link](http://mac.appstorm.net) to this website.

In Byword, you highlight the word you want to link and then hit ?k to wrap the word in brackets and paste the link you copied onto the clipboard into the parentheses. There is no option to do this in Writer Pro that I could find. None. And it’s based on Markdown, a format designed for the web. How ridiculous is that?

Then there’s the iOS version.

Stripped and Dysfunctional

My initial impression of the Mac app was that it was pretty awesome because it was fun to write in, easy to use and had enough of the additional features to get me by, but not so much that it turned into the ribbon on Microsoft Word. So I bought the iPad app, thinking it would translate straight across. I was wrong.

Both the Mac and iOS versions of the app sync with iCloud, putting each item you write into folders labelled “Note,” “Write,” “Edit” and “Read.” But there is no other option for cross-platform syncing, such as the aforementioned Dropbox. The additional keyboard bar, a standard feature in many iOS apps nowadays, doesn’t contain any Markdown characters, such as the # sign and *. Instead, you have to do the same three-tap process you would normally to get your Markdown text into the app. Oh, and it doesn’t preview Markdown, nor does it do Auto Markdown like the Mac app, even though it’s a primary feature of the system.

Wait, what?

No really, no Markdown support. I mean, yes, like any plain-text editor you can write in Markdown and not have any issues displaying it, but you can’t preview in Markdown in any fashion. I mean, what’s the point of that?

The iOS version is just a clunker, and I don’t see any reason to spend $20 on it when Byword functions better, has Markdown preview and is a quarter of the price. I mean, really?

It’s Not All Bad

Even though I’ve blasted this thing to bits, there are a few high points that do give me hope. One problem I often find myself dealing with is converting documents into Markdown. I’ll have a Word doc or something similar written in a rich-text format, and I want to put it on the web. I used to have to manually export the file to plain text, then markup everything manually — a painstaking process.

Although it doesn’t always do a flawless conversion (it can choke when items are both in bold and italics), it’s a heck of a lot better than the alternative. That alone means that Writer Pro has some kind of use in my workflow, even if it’s not a daily thing.

Also, the Statistics field in both versions of the app is quite handy. I can see the reading time, characters, words and sentences that make up any document, and that’s nice to know. Although Byword does have some of those options, reading time isn’t in there at all.

The Sum of all Fears

The high price point of Writer Pro almost implies quality. In today’s app market, it takes a certain amount of chutzpah to price any app over $5, much less $20, and then claim it’s a “Pro” version. I’m sure that there are lots of features coming to Writer Pro on both the Mac and iOS in the coming months, and yes, this is a 1.0 release. But I shouldn’t have to pay $20 (or $40) to be a beta tester, particularly when it’s just so clunky.

All that said, I do enjoy using the Mac version of the app, I just don’t feel like it’s a worthy replacement for many of the writing tools I use today. Whenever I write a post for the web, I’ll still reach for Byword. When I’m working on my novel, it’s to Scrivener I go, and I’ll continue using Pages and Word for work that goes towards magazine design.

Writer Pro is close to being the best all-around app for many different types of writing, but right now, it’s just not there. If you’re a professional writer, I can’t recommend Writer Pro on the Mac to replace any of your current options, because it needs work. And if you’re considering the iOS version, don’t. Save your money, it’s not worth it.

In order to help improve password security, Apple just recently introduced iCloud Keychain in OS X Mavericks and iOS 7. The service is designed is to sync passwords, credit card information, wifi passwords, and account login information across devices.

Though it appears to do those tasks relatively well, it is Apple’s first foray into this field, and there are several well-established contenders already. Today, we’ll compare and contrast iCloud Keychain to LastPass.

Supported Platforms

iCloud Keychain is built into the operating system and works only on Mac OS X Mavericks and iOS 7. If you have an older device that won’t run these operating systems, you won’t be able to use iCloud Keychain. In addition, it only works with the Safari browser on your Mac and iDevices.

LastPass is available as a browser plugin for Mac, Windows, and Linux, running Google Chrome, Firefox 2+, Safari 3+, or Internet Explorer 6. In addition, there are mobile clients for iPad, iPhone, Windows Phone, Android, and Blackberry devices. The mobile clients not only list the synced data, but also include a browser that automatically fills form fields with saved credentials.

Alternative Browsers

One of the major downsides of iCloud Keychain is that it only works with Safari. Perhaps in the future, Apple will broaden support on the Mac, but it’s not likely.

LastPass has made it a point to work nearly everywhere. In addition to the mobile applications available for iOS, Windows Phone, Android, and Blackberry, a bookmarklet feature is available for other mobile browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, and Opera. Even Safari on iOS can use the LastPass bookmarklet.

Password Generators

Both iCloud Keychain and LastPass offer the ability to generate secure passwords. iCloud’s generated passwords are four groups of three characters separated by dashes.

LastPass allows you to specify the length and complexity of passwords, allowing an infinite number of possibilities, especially for websites that have strict rules about how long passwords must be.

Types of Data Synced

According to Apple’s website, iCloud Keychain syncs website usernames/passwords, web form fill information including credit card information, and WiFi network passwords.

LastPass can store website usernames/passwords, web form autofill information (including credit card information), and a number of types of “Secure Notes,” including the following:

1. Bank account
2. Credit card
3. Database
4. Driver’s license
5. Email account
6. Health insurance
7. Instant messenger
8. Insurance
9. Membership
10. Passport
11. Server
12. Social Security
13. Software license
14. SSH key
15. WiFi password
16. Generic secure note

As you can see, LastPass is much more flexible in what it allows.

Data Accessibility

One of the more restricting qualities of iCloud Keychain is that you are unable to access the synced data itself on your iDevice. Though you can use the passwords, form fill data, etc. in Safari and the synced WiFi passwords will work for joining networks, no secure notes or other information is available in any way.

The LastPass app allows you to access any of your saved items from your mobile device; you can even add, modify, or delete items in the mobile app. This makes it especially useful for saving sensitive data like bank account numbers, rather than using Evernote or another insecure note-syncing app.

Encryption

Apple says that the iCloud Kecyhain is encrypted with “robust 256-bit AES encryption.” Unless you explicitly set up an advanced password, your devices require only a 4-digit passcode to set up iCloud Keychain and begin using it.

LastPass’ encryption is completely up to the strength of your password. If you use a weak password, it would be easy for an attacker to brute-force (attempt guesses many times in succession) your password. If you use a long complex password, it will be very hard for someone to access your account. Your data is always encrypted on your computer or mobile device and the only thing synced between devices is a random-looking chunk of text that means nothing without your master password.

Sharing

One of the big benefits of LastPass is that it allows sharing passwords between people. You can share individual items with another LastPass user and even give them “use-only access”—they can use the password but not see it. LastPass 3.0, released in early November, added a new feature called “Home Sharing” where you can create a folder shared with another LastPass user and automatically share everything in that folder with them.

Unfortunately, iCloud Keychain does not have any sharing options at this time.

Open-Source vs. Closed-Source

iCloud Keychain is closed-source code, built into OS X and iOS. There’s no way to verify what it’s actually doing—we just have to take Apple’s word on the type of encryption and how the data is stored and synced.

LastPass is partially open-source (browser plugins, website, etc.) and partially closed-source (syncing back-end, etc.) to prevent knock-offs by competitors. It is based on well-known open-source cryptography, however, which allows the cryptograhy community to verify that it works as described.

Extras

LastPass also offers a number of other password-related features, including “Security Check,” a service that checks how many identical passwords you have and alerts you to how good they are, and “Identities,” allowing you to have different sets of passwords in your account for work, school, home, etc. In addition to all the password features, the company also offers free credit monitoring for credit cards you have stored in their service.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, I’ve covered a number of comparisons between iCloud Keychain and LastPass. Though this comparison may seem like it’s bashing iCloud Keychain in favor of LastPass, that’s not the case.

Introducing this feature so well-integrated into the operating system is potentially a very good thing for end users, especially technically-challenged people who would otherwise use the same password everywhere. Hopefully this will encourage those types of users to develop a better password strategy.

For the power user, LastPass offers a number of compelling features, including sharing encrypted items and the ability to store/access a number of data types on any device.

Both iCloud Keychain and LastPass offer unique strengths and can in fact be used to complement each other. For instance, iCloud could handle all the WiFi password syncing, while you might use the LastPass app for browsing (or copy passwords from the app to paste into your favorite browser) and accessing other data types on the go.

How do you plan to manage your passwords across your devices?

Merry Christmas!

It’s hard to believe another year has come and gone already! And yet, it’s been a great year. Apple showed us they’re still serious about pro users — and, of course, tested our faith with iWork. And then, 3rd party developers did their best again this year, amazing us with great new apps and updates. There’s so many apps that it’s hard to imagine we didn’t have last year — and old favorites that have become even dearer to us.

Whether you got a new Mac today, or perhaps got an App Store gift card that’s burning a hole in your pocket, or just happen to have some holiday downtime and would like to try out some new apps, here’s the very best app reviews, op-eds, and more from Mac.AppStorm this year. So get your reading later app ready, and enjoy!

Apple’s New Stuff

The biggest news of the year was, of course, OS X Mavericks and all the new apps that it brought, along with Apple’s new iWork and iLife Suites. Here’s our articles about everything new in them:

• Most Importantly: Everything You Need to Know About OS X Mavericks
• Pages 5: An Even Better Word Processor — something many of you didn’t agree with
• Numbers 3: Spreadsheets for the Rest of Us Takes a Risky Turn
• Keynote 6.0: The Best Presentations App, Simplified
• GarageBand X: A Free Step Backward
• Everything You Need to Know About the New Logic Pro X
• The Dilemma: Lightroom or Aperture?
• iWork for iCloud: Apple’s Shot at Making iWork a Productivity Standard
• The new iCloud.com Brings iOS 7?s Fresh Design to the Web

Email Apps

Google bought out Sparrow late last year, then largely neglected it, so email apps were on the top of our list of apps we wanted to see in 2013. And they sure delivered. Here’s the best email app articles from the year:

• Top new article of the year: Turning Mail.app Into the Best Mac Email App
  
• Airmail: The Email App That Tries to do it All — and then, it improved a ton
• Inky Gains a Sudden Surge in Popularity
• 3 Great Gmail Menu Bar Apps
• Unibox, the People-Centric Mac Email App
• MailMate, the Markdown-Powered Power User Email App
• Mail Pilot for Mac is Finally in Public Beta

And then, for some deep thoughts on the future of email, here’s James Cull on Why the Future of Email Might Not Look so Different from Email Today and Kevin Whipps on how Mail.app is Broken and Needs to be Fixed.

Adobe Creative Cloud

Adobe turned their Creative Suites into subscriptions this year, letting you get everything they sale for $49/month. And yet, that proved to be a not-so-popular decision. Here’s everything we wrote about Creative Cloud, from how it works and what it offers to its effects on the ecosystem and what other apps you can use instead:

• The AppStorm Step-by-Step Guide for Upgrading to Adobe Creative Cloud
  
• First Look at Creative Cloud File and Typekit Font Sync
• The Best Free Apps From Adobe
• An Open Letter to Adobe on Creative Cloud
• Leave Your Images at Home With Lightroom 5 — the one Adobe Pro app that’s still available without a subscription
• Most Popular: The Best Alternative Apps to Everything in Adobe Creative Cloud
• What Office 365, Creative Cloud, and Other Software Subscriptions Mean for You

The News Apps

Google Reader died this year, leaving a hole in all of our hearts — but that was quickly filled by a ton of new RSS reader apps for the Mac, along with brilliantly updated old favorites. Here’s the best:

• ReadKit 2.3 Takes the RSS Sync and Read Later Crown on the Mac
• Words App: Another Reading Later App Adds RSS Support
• Sputnik — A Beautifully Designed Cross-Platform RSS Reader
• Get Your Morning RSS Fix with Caffeinated 2
• NetNewsWire 4 Beta — a Giant Among Mac Apps Has Returned
• Leaf 2: Another Top-Contender for Mac-only RSS Reading
• The Good, the Bad, and the Terrible of Safari Push Notifications — Apple’s failed attempt to replace RSS, or something

And The Rest

There’s so many more great apps from 2013, it’d take forever to categorize them all, so here’s a ton of our favorites:

•  Alfred 2 – The Productivity Powerhouse Arrives
• Photoshop, Watch Out: Pixelmator 3 FX is here
• 1Password 4 is the Best Password App, Hands Down
• Marked 2 — The Smartest Markdown Writing Assistant
• Napkin: The Simplest Way to Sketch Your Thoughts On Your Mac
• Capture One Pro: A Pro Alternative to Aperture and Lightroom
• darktable: The Free Lightroom and Aperture Alternate
• Jumpshare Plus: The Nicest File Sharing Service Yet
• Bubble Browser 2: The Visual Evernote Browser Just Got Better
• Evernote: The Journey from XP Tablet PC Edition to an Apple Design Award
• Ulysses III 1.1 — The Writing App to End Them All
• The new VMware Fusion and Parallels
• Quicksilver: The Best Free Way to Do Everything With Just Your Keyboard, followed by a ton of awesome Quicksilver tutorials
• Can LaunchBar Snippets replace TextExpander?
• Intensify Brings Out Tiny Details in Images
• Write Your Hollywood Screenplay With Highland
• OmniGraffle 6: A Huge Leap for the Mac Diagraming App
• Wunderlist Pro is Finally Here, with Task Delegation and More
• DropDMG: The Simplest Way to Make Customized Disk Images
• Simplenote for Mac: A Beautiful Alternative to iCloud Notes
• Diptic: A Simple Way to Make Collages on Your Mac
• Shortcat: Use Your Keyboard for Everything Onscreen
• PopClip: The Unexpectedly Awesome Productivity Tool
• Ember 1.2 — The Smartest Image Library, Ever
• Lenote: Note-Taking Meets Minimalism
• LetterMpress and SimplyMpress: Making Letterpress Art on Your Mac

And some roundups:

• The 35 Best Free Apps for Your Mac in 2013
• The 8 Best Apps to Manage Your Lists
  
• The Best Apps for Simple Image Annotations
• Improving the Trackpad: Three Gesture Apps Compared
• The 10 Best Non-Subscription Invoicing and Time Tracking Apps
• 10 Must Have Mac Apps for Any Beginner Guitarist
• The 12 Best Apps for Keyboard Lovers
• The Best Apps to Read eBooks on Your Mac
• The 10 Best Indie Games to Play in 2013
• The Best Web Code Editors for Your Mac in 2013
• 16 Great Workflows to Jumpstart Your Alfred Experience

Want more great stuff? Then don’t forget about our huge roundups of the Apps We Use this year, with the lists of the tools everyone on our team uses to get their work done.

The Pocket Favorites

AppStorm’s articles were some of the most saved on Pocket this year, and we were very excited that Mac.AppStorm was included in their roundup of the Pocket Hits of 2013. Here’s the top 5 articles from that roundup — be sure to check Pocket for the rest of the list!

• Secure Your Dropbox Files From Prying Eyes with SafeMonk
• 16 Great Workflows to Jumpstart Your Alfred Experience
• Evernote: Your New Office Suite
• Paid Software is Dead. Or Not.
• The 35 Best Free Apps for Your Mac in 2013

Then, a ton of other AppStorm articles about great Web, Android, iPad, iPhone, and Mac articles were included in the Pocket roundup of the top articles from the entire AppStorm network. Be sure to check it out for some great app reading for your holiday free time.

Your Favorites

Did we miss the review of your favorite new Mac app from 2013? Be sure to let us know what your favorite app of the year was in the comments below.

Thank you so much for being a part of our AppStorm community, and we hope you’re having a great Holiday season this year!

There’s so many video file formats, it can be infuriating trying to figure out how to play them all. So why not convert your full video library and put all of your videos into your favorite formats, then save them in the sizes that’ll be best on each of your devices? That’s exactly what Wundershare Video Converter Ultimate, our sponsor this week, is designed for.

Wundershare Video Converter Ultimate can convert over 100 video formats — everything from .mov and .wma to DVD ISO images — into any format you’d like. But it’s far simpler than you’d imagine. All you have to do is drag in your videos, select the device you want to watch the video on, and let Wundershare do its job. Or, you can tweak the settings if you like to the exported video format and size you want. Then, you can use it to add the metadata you want to your videos, and it’ll automatically add them to your iTunes library for simple playback and sync to your devices.

And that’s not all. Wundershare Video Converter Ultimate also includes a simple video editor so you can trim, add effects, and subtitles and more to your video clips and share just what you want. You can also can download online videos so you can watch them offline on your Mac just like you could with YouTube’s mobile apps. It can also burn videos to DVD, so you can backup your special footage and share it easily with anyone.

Get Your Copy of Wundershare Video Converter!

Want a simple way to share all of your great holiday videos, or perhaps convert some of your videos to keep the kids entertained on your Christmas road trip? Then grab your own copy of Wundershare Video Converter Ultimate today. It’s 20% off for the holidays, so you can get your own copy for just $59.95 this week!

There’s so many video file formats, it can be infuriating trying to figure out how to play them all. So why not convert your full video library and put all of your videos into your favorite formats, then save them in the sizes that’ll be best on each of your devices? That’s exactly what Wondershare Video Converter Ultimate, our sponsor this week, is designed for.

Wondershare Video Converter Ultimate can convert over 100 video formats — everything from .mov and .wma to DVD ISO images — into any format you’d like. But it’s far simpler than you’d imagine. All you have to do is drag in your videos, select the device you want to watch the video on, and let Wondershare do its job. Or, you can tweak the settings if you like to the exported video format and size you want. Then, you can use it to add the metadata you want to your videos, and it’ll automatically add them to your iTunes library for simple playback and sync to your devices.

And that’s not all. Wondershare Video Converter Ultimate also includes a simple video editor so you can trim, add effects, and subtitles and more to your video clips and share just what you want. You can also can download online videos so you can watch them offline on your Mac just like you could with YouTube’s mobile apps. It can also burn videos to DVD, so you can backup your special footage and share it easily with anyone.

Get Your Copy of Wondershare Video Converter!

Want a simple way to share all of your great holiday videos, or perhaps convert some of your videos to keep the kids entertained on your Christmas road trip? Then grab your own copy of Wondershare Video Converter Ultimate today. It’s 20% off for the holidays, so you can get your own copy for just $59.95 this week!

There’s so many things you could get as a gift, but there’s only a few things you’d actually hope to get. Surprises are always the best, but it’s hard to silence the inner child and not wistfully think of what gifts you’d like to get if you could get anything you want.

I know, I know. Every self-respecting Apple fan would kill to have a new Mac Pro — especially in Ive’s signature RED edition — under the tree, but the chances of that — at least without you knowing about it — are rather slim. But there’s still tons of other great gifts, from the practical ones like external hard drives to the surprising ones like hardcover books about Apple or perhaps coding and design that you’d love to have grace your bookshelves.

We’ve already rounded up the Mac gifts we think are the very best, but I’m certain there’s other great geeky gifts we overlooked. So, assuming you were nice and not naughty this year, what geeky Christmas presents are you hoping will be under the tree this year? Or did you already go out and splurge on some geeky gifts for yourself? We’d love to hear about them!

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” wrote Charles Dickens, in a sentence that happens to sum up almost every human experience in my opinion. But for technology, the one thing that brings that quote to mind most is eBooks. See, eBooks are a brilliant idea. With a simple tap, you can download a full book that’d otherwise have taken a trip to a book store or a wait of a few days from Amazon. That downloaded book can be read on your phone, tablet, Mac, or eReader, devices which you already cary around and most of which weigh less than the average hardback — and which can also hold hundreds and thousands of books. It’s a bookworm’s dream come true.

And yet, eBooks are far from perfect. For every beautifully detailed eBook, like those made for iBooks with iBooks Author, there’s a horribly formatted Kindle book that doesn’t do justice to any text. Or, there’s the low-quality scanned PDFs of books that you’ll find online from questionable sources, that’ll quickly convince you eBooks are a terrible idea.

But eBooks shouldn’t be a bad idea, and you shouldn’t need an interactive, multimedia eBook to make it nice. Enter Vellum.

Vellum’s a brand-new app designed to let anyone create beautifully laid out eBooks for every eBook platform at once. Built by former Pixar team members, Vellum is surprisingly the antithesis to the fancy, animated works you’d expect a team of that legacy to create. Instead, it’s an app to restore beauty to text, and make it simple to craft a beautifully typeset text eBook.

At its core, Vellum looks suspiciously like a modernized and streamlined version of Scrivener or perhaps a mix of it and Ulysses III. There’s a list of chapters on the left, and a simple rich text writing pane in the center. You’ll find standard bold, italics, and underline tools, typography options like drop caps and superscripts, along with options to enter a subhead, ornamental break, block quotation, or verse. That, along with a word count, is all you’ll find in your writing tools. There’s no options for adding photos or illustrations — it’s just focused on text. You can write in the app, or import your own text or Word documents, which it’ll automatically turn into the chapters and sections you need.

And then, it’s focused on making it simple to make that text look as nice as it possibly can on every eBook reading platform around. You’ll find a preview pane on the far right that shows what your book will look like on a Kindle Paperwhite, Nook Simple Touch, iPhone or iPad, complete with the standard font options on each of those platforms. You’ll also find 8 styles under the Styles sidebar tab that let you tweak how your book looks in general. You can’t actually change the themes themselves — there’s no options, say, to design your own header or footnote style, or bundle a new font with your book. Instead, you’ll find a set of pre made themes that you can combine bits and pieces of — the block quote style from one theme with the header style of another theme, say — to make your book look like you want.

Once you’re done, all that’s left to do is publish, since for once you won’t need to go test your book on a number of devices to see what it’ll look like. That’s where Vellum’s business model comes in — it costs $49 to generate eBook files for the iBooks store, Kindle store, Nook store, and in DRM-free ePub formats, and then you can buy bundles of multiple books for less together ($99 for 3 books, and so on). You’ll still need to submit the books yourself, but you won’t need to convert or tweak anything else since Vellum’s done the hard work for you already.

Vellum’s an interesting shot at making it just as easy to publish a non-interactive eBook as it is to publish a detailed iBooks book with iBooks Author, but its lack of tweakable options makes it slightly less exciting. It’s still a great way to simplify creating eBook formats for every eBook store, and preview how your book will look on each device, but I have to hope they’ll add more ways to make your own book stand out on every platform. But for now, anything that makes it simpler to create clean text eBooks that look great everywhere is a great step forward.

I write in Markdown all the time, the easy-to-use writing syntax conceived of by John Gruber (of Daring Fireball fame). The nice thing about the syntax is that it doesn’t require any one specific app, so web writers can use it with whatever text editor they feel like — including default editors like TextEdit for Mac, which is much more powerful than most of us realize, I think.

That hasn’t stopped the flow of Markdown editors from arriving for Mac, though. Recently, I stumbled upon Lightpaper, which will be familiar to anybody who uses Android. Lightpaper Pro is well known on the Google Play Store, and I even reviewed it on Android.AppStorm. I went so far as to include it amongst the most noteworthy Markdown-equipped Android apps. The real question is: can lightning strike twice for developer Clockwork Engine with the Lightpaper Mac app? Read on to find out if this app is worth exploring, even in its beta state.

A Desktop Design

The first thing you’re probably wondering is how the Android design can fare on a larger desktop screen. After all, Android apps aren’t exactly known for their design polish. Thankfully, though, the two apps are almost entirely different from one another, taking only the slightest elements of design (like the typography for the Markdown preview). The folks at Clockwork Engine have taken their Android design and made it into an entirely different beast for Mac.

 

The Mac app is, first and foremost, fast. It’s a nice place to write in because it feels focused on everything you need for the task, and while a lot of people have focused on minimalist text editors, Lightpaper takes the cake for being one of the prettiest feature-packed editors I’ve ever seen. And, as a bonus, they’ve made it so that you don’t have to know Markdown to use the app’s features. You can highlight text and use the Format menu or some keyboard shortcuts to make changes the old-fashioned way.

Not unlike the Android app, Lightpaper for Mac lets you work with differently-coloured themes. I’m a sucker for Solarized Light themes, so that’s what I’ve ended up sticking with, but if you don’t find any built-in themes to your liking, there’s a Github page where you can find many others to install. The typefaces are also customizable, but they regrettably don’t have access to your full OS X font library and look a little more Android-inspired than I’d like.

The app is split up into multiple panes, which you can easily turn on and off. First is the text editor itself. This is consistent; you can’t turn this off for obvious reasons. You can also toggle a Markdown preview on the right and file navigation on the left. I love the Markdown preview on the right, which I think is a really handy feature, and the file navigation that appears on the left is perfect for anybody working on long form writing in multiple different files.

The app also comes with tabbed writing, so that if you’re working with multiple files at once, you can easily just swap from one open file to the next. I’ve found this tool surprisingly indispensable — I’ve been using it all the time since I got the app, and in a way, it helps me stay focused on what I need to write today. I keep everything running until it’s been posted, which is great as a sort of hybrid todo list and text editor.

There’s a couple really nice touches, too: the app has highlighted syntax, which is great, and even has a special icon in the tabs for unsaved work. Unfortunately, work doesn’t save automatically, although I think that’s the next logical step.

The app also makes logical sense for author writers, too. If you turn off the Markdown preview pane and turn on file navigation, you could potentially get easy access to each chapter of a book as you write. I think it’s great.

Beta Software

That being said, it’s not perfect. I’ve got a couple beefs with Lightpaper, and I’m going to chalk all of them up to Clockwork Engine’s current beta status out of fairness — after all, there are likely going to be more features added and many bugs fixed by the time this hits a 1.0 status.

The first complaint I have is that the panes don’t always work. I had to restart the app because the file navigator pane wouldn’t display. Granted, I could have opened the file just by going through the regular menu, but that defeats the point of the feature. Little glitches like that aren’t incredibly numerous, but they do happen.

Secondly, the Markdown preview pane doesn’t scroll with the text. It always displays the beginning of the article, but you have to manually scroll down to keep up with any later changes you’ve made. As soon as you begin typing again, your preview often jumps back up to the beginning of the article, again making it a moot point. But this is a bug — not a feature.

Finally, there are a couple things that I wish were actual features. For example, I prefer OS X to check my spelling as I type. That helps me edit on the fly, and it keeps me from making really foolish mistakes. I have to select this setting every time I open or create a new file; I can’t make it a default. (By default, spelling will only be checked when I tell Lightpaper to check it.) I also wish that the keyboard shortcuts were a little easier. I don’t know if I’m used to the way those other apps do it, but every shortcut in Lightpaper feels like it takes one too many keys compared to the competition.

There’s also a Distraction Free mode that bears some mentioning. It doesn’t work quite as well as it does with other popular text editing software, and is a little buggy as well. When it does work, it works as you would expect for the most part. While I’m writing right now, every other paragraph is greyed out and I’m left only to focus on my current words. However, Markdown syntax highlighting is turned off in Distraction Free Mode, and the red lines signifying a spelling error remain as visible as ever when in Distraction Free mode — so text is almost invisible, but spelling mistakes are clear as day.

Again, to make it clear, these are growing pains for Lightpaper. They’re part and parcel of a beta app. The real questions should be about the overall writing experience. While Lightpaper might be flawed, it’s also bringing something new to the table. It looks similar to some coding apps I’ve seen, and it just feels good. The typeface is a little robotic (not surprising, considering its Android legacy), but at the same time, it feels friendly. While I’m not sure I’d want to write the next American novel in Lightpaper’s interface, it’s perfect for web writing.

Final Thoughts

Lightpaper is buggy. If this was a bug-free product that did everything naturally without any setup from me, I think it’d be as close to perfect as any Markdown text editor could ever be. That being said, it’s not there yet. It’s not ready for prime time. But for those of us who are early adopters, it’s worth checking out.

Something about the writing experience in Lightpaper makes it easier for me to focus. It’s not the Distraction Free Mode, and it’s not the Full Screen view. In truth, I barely use either of those because they largely feel like gimmicks. But the app does feel fresh. While using it for the past couple days, my writing productivity has skyrocketed by about 200%. If this weren’t a free beta, I’d pay good money for that kind of improvement. And while I’m not sure if I can blame it on my morning coffee recently or on this app, I will say Lightpaper is more than worth trying.

Storage space is at an all time premium these days, with the shiniest new Macs shipping with incredibly fast — but also rather small — SSDs. That’s why it’s important to make sure you’re not wasting space on your Mac, which is exactly what MacBooster, our sponsor this week, is designed for.

MacBooster will scan your Mac for bloated caches, the old files left behind by apps you’ve uninstalled, duplicate files, and more. It’s stuff you could delete yourself, but nobody has has time for that — and odds are you’d overlook most of the stuff taking up space. So MacBooster does the hard work for you, finding what’s taking up space and clearing it out for you. Minutes later, your Mac will have a lot of free space that was simply taken up by junk.

There’s more, too. MacBooster will help you fully uninstall apps the next time you’re removing an old app. It’ll also find the biggest files on your Mac, so you can perhaps find those old videos that need a new home on an external drive to free up space for the stuff you’re actually using. Then, it’ll show you what’s starting up when you boot your Mac, so you can turn off the stuff you don’t need and speed up your startup time.

If your MacBook’s SSD has started feeling cramped and you want to save yourself some cleanup time, here’s the tool that can clean it up and free up the valuable space you need before the holidays. It’s the perfect Christmas gift for your Mac!

Get MacBooster 60% Off for Christmas!

Best of all, you can get your own copy of MacBooster for just $19.95 from now until December 25th in the MacBooster Christmas Sale. That’s 60% off its normal price, and if you’ve been wanting an app to make it easier to clear out your app caches and fully uninstall apps, it’s the perfect time to treat yourself to a cleaner Mac for Christmas.

’Tis the season to give presents — so you’re likely spending your weekend running around trying to find the perfect gift for that nice someone. But there’s only so many ties and snowglobes one can use. So why not get the geeks in your life something special this year?

No, you can’t get a new Mac Pro yet, and even if you could it’d have to be a very special someone if you were going to put one of those under the tree for them. That doesn’t mean you can’t get something very nice for them still, all without breaking the bank. So here’s our favorite geeky Mac gifts for this year, ones we’d love to receive and happen to think you’ll be tempted to splurge on for yourself as well.

Raspberry Pi

I know, I know: we said this roundup was of great Mac gifts, and the first thing on the list is a Linux computer. But it’s in many ways the most awesome tiny computer ever built. For just $25, you can buy a full ARM-powered computer on a tiny board that you can plug into your monitor or TV and hack away. It’s being used in all types of home automation projects — including, of all things, a home DVD ripping setup, and all types of awesome stuff our Tuts+ team has thought up — and it includes a free copy of Wolfram Mathematica, something that’d usually cost hundreds of dollars for personal use.

For the kid that’s learning to code, or the geek that loves tinkering, it’s the perfect gift.

Price: $25+

Leap Motion Controller

All the new game consoles let you control them with your hands, just like Minority Report showed us over a decade ago. It’s time for you to stop touching your Mac’s touchpad and start using your hands and thin air to work magic. The new Leap Motion controller wasn’t perfect in our review, but it’s cool enough that it’s bound to make anyone’s Christmas. This little connecter will let your Mac detect your hands so you can pan around Google Earth, play games, or even show off a 3D model just by waving your hands around.

If you do pick one up, be sure to use the coupon code LeapHoliday2013 to get free shipping and $10 credit for the [Airspace}(https://airspace.leapmotion.com) app store. That makes it an even more attractive Christmas gift!

Price: $79.99

Lego Mac

Legos are the toys you never grow out of, and Chris McVeigh’s lego sets are more amazing than any of the branded Lego sets ever imagined being. Most special, of course, is the original Macintosh remade out of tiny legos. It’s the perfect compliment to any Mac lover’s desk — come on, you know you want one already. But hey: if you want something even more different, he’s got lego versions of everything from an instant camera to a turkey, all with free guides you can build yourself or as kits you can buy and put together simply.

Price: Premade kit $68.50, but sold out right now. You can download the guide for free, though, and buy your own Lego bricks individually for an extra special gift.

PlugBug

For your traveling Mac-loving friend, here’s the perfect gift that’ll make their bag lighter and traveling days brighter: the PlugBug. It’s an ingenious little charger from the Twelve South team that combines a MacBook and iPhone/iPad charger all in one stylish accessory. It’s so clever, we’re just surprised Apple hasn’t made something like this already.

Price: $34.99, or $44.99 for the international version

Nifty MiniDrive

Want to add more space to your MacBook? It’s next-to-impossible to put in your own SSD, but it’s tough to settle on storing everything on external drives. The next best option is the Nifty MiniDrive. It’s a tiny adaptor for your SD card slot that’ll let you keep a microSD card inside your Mac without anything sticking out. That’ll give you an extra 32-64Gb of storage that’s almost as nice as built-in storage. I’ve been using it myself to store my iTunes and iPhoto libraries, and it’s been a great addition to my MacBook Air’s 128Gb of internal storage.

Price: $39.99

Doxie

There’s the flatbed scanners we’re all used to from 3-in-one printers, and then there’s the Doxies. These innovative little scanners make it easy to go paperless, enough so that you’ll actually want to scan all of your documents. There’s the Doxie One that lets you feed in your paper and scan in seconds, and the new Doxie Flip that turns flatbed scanning into the simplest way to scan anything — paper textures, full notebooks, and more. Either one would make a great gift for anyone that’s trying to clean up their cluttered offices and go paperless.

Price: $139 for the Doxie One, $149 for the new Doxie Flip.

PowerUp 3.0

This one’s going to require more than just a Mac, but it’s too cool to pass up. PowerUp is a new remote controlled paper airplane that lets you turn your smartphone and a paper airplane into a remote controlled plane that can fly for 10 minutes on one charge. It’s currently raising funds on Kickstarter, so you can’t get your hands on it just yet, but this is a gift that’s nice enough that the special person in your life shouldn’t mind waiting for.

Price: $30+ — and remember, Kickstarter isn’t a store, and there’s no guarantee it’ll ship, but at over 12 times its original goal it seems pretty likely this one will ship.

Iconic book

This book won’t give you any new insights into Apple, or let you know what Steve Jobs was thinking when he left the company to found NeXT. But, it does include some of the most beautiful photography of everything Apple’s made that you could imagine. From pictures of original Macs and iPods to box art on Apple Software, it’s bound to be any true Apple fan’s favorite coffee table book. And if you’re willing to spend even more, there’s a special edition that includes a case that looks like a vintage computer.

Price: $75; $300 for the special edition

USB 3 External HDD

You can never have too much storage space, and with most new Macs shipping with SSDs, a couple external drives are always great to have around. The new USB 3 drives are plenty fast enough — there’s no real reason to spend nearly double the price for Thunderbolt drives, in most cases — and you should be able to find one just about anywhere. That’s the perfect wrapable gift for almost anyone these days, seeing how many pictures and videos most people take around the holidays.

Price: Depends on model; around $69 for 1Tb and $120 for 2Tb

Quick tip: There’s two seemingly obvious gifts that we thought we’d make sure to mention you should not get. The first would be any external HDD that’s USB 2. They’re far slower than USB 3 drives, and the price isn’t enough cheaper to be worth that. And then, whatever you do, don’t buy Office 2011 as a gift. Every indicator is that Microsoft will release the next Office for Mac early next year, so just don’t buy it now. If you must, buy an Office 365 subscription since it’ll get updates for free.

iTunes Gift Cards

You can’t gift Mac App Store apps, for some strange reason, so it’s rather hard to give software as a gift these days. But, there’s always iTunes gift cards that let you buy anything you want on the App Store, iTunes Store, and iBooks Store. That’s plenty to keep anyone happy, whether it’s a new app or tunes they’re looking for. Of course, make sure to get an iTunes Gift Card and not an Apple Store gift card if you want them to be able to get something downloadable — the former is for Apple’s digital stores, and the latter is only for Apple’s brick-and-mortar retail stores for Macs, iOS devices, and more.

Of course, if that special person in your life is a gamer, it might be better to gift them that Steam or GOG game they’ve been wanting, since both services let you digitally gift games. Or, if they’re a reader and not too fond of iBooks, an Amazon gift card might be even better since it can get eBooks, paper books, or, well, anything else Amazon sales (though that makes it that much less of a personalized gift, of course).

Price: $10+

MacBook Bag/Sleeve/Case

One of the more obvious gifts for any Mac lover would be a new MacBook bag, sleeve, case, or any other way to keep their Mac warm and protected. And yet, there’s so many different MacBook bags out there, and each of us have such varied preferences, it’d be impossible to list the perfect MacBook bag. Earlier this year, our team rounded up the MacBook bags we all use, with prices varying from around $25 to over $100.

If you know that Mac lover in your life really well, and have your eye on a bag you know they’ll love, this could be a great present. Just be warned: there’s a ton to choose from, and most people are really picky about how they cary their Mac around.

Price: At least $30+, realistically

Subscription Gift

This will sound like a worse cop-out than an iTunes Gift Card, and only a tiny step up from putting cash in a card, but hear us out. See, you can gift a Netflix or Spotify subscription — or order a gift card for either — that’ll let you give several months of unlimited TV shows or music for that special person in your life.

It’s your way of giving them an excuse to binge watch House of Cards over New Years, or liven up their work in the new year. That’s not so bad — it might even come across as a thoughtful gift. And even though our Web.AppStorm readers were generally against the idea of subscriptions as a gift, they seemed to think services like these still made fine gifts.

Price: $10+

The Shape of Design book

Mind if I include something I personally liked enough to order for myself? No? Ok, good.

Frank Chimero’s The Shape of Design book started life as a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign back in 2011, and since has been turned into the most nicely designed online eBook about design that’s been made yet. And it’s nothing like what you’re thinking. The Shape of Design isn’t a dry book about the concepts behind design and typography and more, but rather a thoughtful piece about putting creativity into our work. It’s inspiring, thought provoking, and beautiful. And now, it’s finally back in print, so it’d be the perfect gift for that design-focused Mac lover in your life.

Price: Free PDF/ePub download, $30.00 for hardback book

Evernote Moleskin Notebooks

Computers and tablets were supposed to replace paper, but there’s just something about writing in a paper notebook that you can’t replicate on a computer. So Evernote set out to make the best of both worlds, with Moleskin notebooks — now in a whole arrange of shapes and sizes — that are designed to be easy to scan into Evernote. They even include stickers so you can add real-life tags to your notes that’ll show up in their digital copy in Evernote.

They look great — enough that our own CEO Collis picked one up in Japan just because of the cover — but they’re also more valuable than just their paper. They also come with free Evernote Pro, with the small journals including one onto and the larger notebooks including three months for free. You can’t gift an Evernote subscription right now, but you can buy a Moleskin that’ll make a beautiful gift and give that special person a bonus Evernote subscription.

Price: From $11.95 for a pocket journal to $29.95 for a large classic notebook.

And That’s Not All!

That’s some pretty awesome stuff, but it’s no where near everything we could have included. After all, there’s always the random Apple t-shirts you can find on eBay, the books about Apple we’ve loved this year, the brilliant stuff from ThinkGeek and the xkcd store, and the always handy nicer earbuds, keyboards, and more that make perfect geeky Christmas presents. There’s more, for sure, so if you’ve picked out a great Mac gift for this year, we’d love to hear about it in the comments below!

And hey: from the Envato and AppStorm families to yours, here’s to a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year for us all!

Gift icon via Artdesigner.lv

A week or two ago, I read an article that talked about the concept of Enough.” The idea is that you don’t need to make a million dollars a year to be happy, you just need Enough to buy what you need when you need it. Shortly thereafter, a friend of mine and I have a conversation about his shoes, of all things. Turns out that he owned a pair of Dr. Martens shoes, and for the past seven years he’s just had them resoled, keeping them in his rotation ever since the first day he bought them.

So what the heck do these two things have to do with Apple? It’s about a little epiphany I had the other day. Bear with me, there’s a point to all this.

Like the article? You should subscribe and follow us on twitter.

Enough

About this “enough” concept. You really should read the whole article, but here’s a snippet:

Having Enough is awesome. How would I define “Enough”? Enough means that you can take a friend out to a nice lunch and not have to worry about how much it costs. I have hung out with a couple of billionaires—my experiences indicate that being a billionaire is just incrementally better than Enough.

I’ve found myself chasing the money dragon for years, and recent events have caused me to question that practice. Not only has it caused me undue stress, but it’s just not healthy. The chances that I’ll ever have ridiculous amounts of cash are slim, so why act like it’s just a few 80-hour weeks away from happening? Be happy with what you have, and just work towards having Enough. Enough that I don’t have to stress about having money when a washing machine breaks down or a kid needs braces. Enough that money doesn’t become such a problem that I’m worrying about keeping up exorbitant figures and having to push those 80 hours to 100. Enough.

BIFL

A friend of mine (not the guy with the shoes) always buys cheap tools. His logic is that it’s cheaper, so if it breaks, he just buys a new one. Me, I buy the pricey tools. Not for the name brand, but for the warranty — lifetime replacement no matter what happens. When I purchase a tool, I plan to own it forever.

It turns out that there’s a name for that concept: BIFL or Buy It For Life. And even better, there’s a subreddit dedicated to the topic. It’s about the idea that you should buy quality items that will last you a lifetime, thus saving you money over the long term. That appeals to me on a number of levels — sustainability, recycling, costs — it just keeps going. But ultimately, part of the reason why I buy any of the stuff I purchase is the quality, which is where Apple comes into the whole thing.

Apple, Enough and BIFL

I’ve bought Apple products since 2004, with my first iPod (the iPod Photo, if you must know). To date, every Apple product that I’ve kept still functions perfectly well. If I didn’t keep it, I sold it without a substantial loss — sometimes even a profit — because they’re all solid, reliable, well-built machines. And reading articles like this cement that concept even further.

I don’t think any piece of technology can truly qualify for BIFL status because of Moore’s Law and how electronics keep moving forward. However, you can keep a machine for a long time, especially if you take care of it. The MacBook Air that I’m typing this on will likely be in our household for the next decade, passed from me to my kids and maybe into a home server of some kind. We currently have an ’07 iMac sitting in my office awaiting an SSD upgrade. Why? The iMac will make a great learning tool for my three-year-old son, and the SSD will help pick it up in speed. And we would’ve used it as-is, but the hard drive just gave out after six years of service.

The mobile devices are just the same. My original iPad is still chugging along just fine. Even though it can’t run anything newer than iOS 5, it’s a fun tool for my 8-month-old daughter to use to learn how to interact with things or watch the occasional movie. No problems with battery life, no issues with anything else other than a tweak in the screen where my son dropped it (and even then the glass didn’t break). They may not last forever, but they sure can go a long time.

A Shift in Direction

I think that we all get wrapped up in the hype of Apple and their new product releases. I often find myself buying whatever the new gadget is online via pre-order or whatever, particularly with iOS devices. And even though I sell the previous model for a good amount, there’s usually still some out-of-pocket cost associated with the deal, and that all adds up.

But now I’m making a change. The Retina iPad mini that sits on my bed stand right now is an amazing machine, and I don’t see any reason to change anytime soon. My Air is the best Air I’ve owned, and since I’ve had a few (one is my wife’s now), I can say that with authority. I just can’t see a need to buy the next big thing, no matter what comes down the pike. Sure, there will be a faster iPad mini, likely with the fingerprint scanner and all that. Or the next Air, which might have a Retina display. And yes, I might want them for just a little bit because I am still me, a tech loving guy, and it’s easy to get caught up in the Apple hype machine (and it’s my job, there’s that). But I don’t need them, not by a long shot.

I’m getting there, but right now I just don’t have Enough yet. And until I do, I think it’s best to just be happy where I am and continue working my way forward. We don’t always have to own the latest and greatest, and maybe, in my case anyways, it’s best that I don’t.

It’s the time of the year for gifts, and yet if you spend enough time around AppStorm and other app-focused sites, you’ll find a number of gifts throughout the year. We’re always excited to feature a giveaway of an app we love, and I’m certain many of you have filled your launchpads with apps you’ve picked up on deals and free giveaways we’ve featured. And yet, there’s one thing that always seems to stump almost everyone once in a while: redeeming gift codes.

So here, in a nutshell, is how to redeem an App Store gift code for any Mac or iOS app — or just to add App Store credit to your account if you’re lucky enough to find an iTunes Gift Card in your stocking this year.

Redeem Mac Apps

Mac apps are what we giveaway the most — and if you’re a fan of Mac.AppStorm, chances are you’re most excited when you get new Mac apps. If you get a free code for a Mac app, it’ll be a 12 digit alphanumerical code that you simply have to copy into the App Store to redeem. Just copy the code, perhaps from the email where you got it, and open the Mac App Store. There, on the right sidebar, you should see a Redeem link under the Quick Links. Tap that, and enter your normal App Store password to login.

Now, just paste that code into the box that appears on the bottom where you can enter your code manually. Then, tap the Redeem button that’ll appear beside the text box, and your app will automatically download. That’s it!

You’ll do the very same to redeem an iTunes Gift Card or App Store gift card — and yes, any iTunes Gift Card or App Store gift card can be used to purchase anything from any of Apple’s digital stores: the Mac App Store, the iTunes store, the iOS App Store, and the iBooks store. And if you have a gift card, the Mac App Store is the simplest place to redeem it. Just tap the Redeem link and login as before, and this time, you can use your Mac’s camera to add the gift card if you’d like. Just tap the Use Camera button, hold your gift card’s barcode up to where it’s visible on your Mac, and it’ll automatically be added to your account. Or, you can type the code in manually if that’s easier.

One more thing to remember: app gift codes expire after around two weeks, so always be sure to hurry and redeem them whenever you get them.

Redeem iOS Apps

If you win an iOS app code, and get it while you’re on your Mac, you might as well go ahead and redeem it right there. This time, iTunes is your friend. Just open iTunes, then tap the iTunes Store button in the top right, and select the now-familiar Redeem link under Quick Links. Sign in as before, and you’ll soon see a nearly identical Redeem Code screen.

Now, it’s the same as before. Just enter your gift code in the box on the bottom, and tap the Redeem button. Your app will go ahead and start downloading, but if you don’t usually sync your iOS devices with your Mac, you can just cancel the download by tapping the x in the iTunes status pane on top. Then, from your iOS device, you can download the app directly from your device’s App Store under the Purchased section.

And, yes, you can redeem your iTunes Gift Cards here in iTunes as well, if you’d like. The Mac App Store just happens to require one less click. Either way, though, the credit will be visible in any Apple digital store you’re logged into.

It’ll Get Easier

Now, it’s not so hard to redeem App Store codes — after all, it’s nice to get something for free anyhow, even if it is a tad difficult. But it’s getting easier, actually. The Tokens for Mac app that came out earlier this year lets developers share their App Store codes in a simple webpage that launches the appropriate App Store and auto-fills your free key for you. All you’ll have to do is click one link, and enter your password once the App Store opens. That’s insanely simple.

Otherwise, though, all you have to look for is that slightly elusive Redeem link. So, if you happen to get any App Store codes this holiday season — or anytime in the foreseeable future — now you’ll know how to redeem them.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year, croons Andry Williams, and if free stuff makes your day, that’s never more true than online during the Holidays. There’s giveaways galore — and for the next 30 hours or so, there’s a giveaway that’s come all the way from 1997 to wish you a happy 2013 holiday season.

The GOG team — the people behind the DRM free game store that re-releases classic games for the Mac and PC — have just launched their 2013 DRM-Free Winter Sale with over 600 games discounted by at least 50%. There’s different deals available every day, with everything from sets of classic games to discounts on newer games like Papers, Please and Faster Than Light. There’s apps for every genre and taste — relive classic sims with SimCity 2000 and Rollercoaster Tycoon, or take on Duke Nukem 3D, all with steep discounts. Each deal’s for a limited time, so you’ll need to hurry and grab the games you want when you see they’re discounted.

But the very best deal is just for today, so you’d better hurry and grab it. From now until 1:59PM GMT on Saturday, you can get Fallout, Fallout 2, and Fallout Tactics for free from GOG. These classic post-apocryphal RPG games would normally sale for $29 on GOG, and you can now download the whole set for nothing. Each game is dated — original Fallout is now 16 years old — but hey: how can you pass up an opportunity to get what Gamespot called “one of the best role-playing games to be released in several years” back when they reviewed it?

Be sure to tell all of your gaming friends — here’s your chance to almost give them a Christmas gift for free! And hey, even if you miss out on this giveaway, you might as well add some holiday cheer and pick up a few discounted games from the still ongoing sale through the end of the holiday season. You’ll even be able to vote on the deals you’d like to see, and could check some special people off your holiday gift list by gifting them a game or three while saving money yourself.